Edinburgh Woollen Mill, the purveyor of Harris Tweed, tartan blankets and knitwear, has reported a bumper Christmas. The company, which is owned by Philip Day, a Cumbria-based textiles entrepreneur, said that sales had risen by 2.7 per cent in the five weeks to January, and that Peacocks, its

Landlords who lost tens of millions of pounds when HMV collapsed have criticised a system that has allowed the administrator and advisers to rake in £19 million in fees. The British Property Federation, which represents the interests of the country’s biggest landlords, said the fees charged by

British shoppers are becoming more confident and buying “big ticket” items, such as sofas and wardrobes, boosting the country’s out-of-town shopping centres. The latest figures show that footfall there increased by 1.5 per cent last month in the best performance across the country’s retail sector

The contentious misting machines in the fruit and veg aisles at Morrisons are going — and next week so will the man who championed them. Dalton Philips, the outgoing chief executive of Wm Morrison, will leave on Monday. The Bradford-based grocer, which is trying to revive sales in a difficult

The woman credited with helping SuperGroup to become an international brand is leaving the fashion retailer three months after the arrival of its new chief executive. Susanne Given, the chief operating officer of the group, which owns the Superdry brand, has resigned with immediate effect. Euan

Two years after the collapse of HMV, its administrator and advisers are on track to claim as much as £19 million in fees, while unsecured creditors will bank less than a penny in the pound. The latest update on the administration progress from Deloitte shows that it earned £11.7 million in fees

There was a time when the thought of a Reckitt Benckiser boss sitting in the cheap seats was, well, unthinkable — but not any more, apparently. Rakesh Kapoor pledged yesterday to fly economy as he set out a cost-cutting programme to strip out £150 million of expenses from the consumer goods group.

Shares in Hugo Boss lost some of their fragrance yesterday after one of its biggest shareholders sold a tranche of its holding in the fashion house. Permira, the private equity group, has cut its stake in the German company to less than 14 per cent after placing shares at a price understood to be

Keep ’em guessing, keep ’em interested, so the saying goes, in which case New Look is doing a textbook job of flirtatiously maintaining City interest in its on-again, off-again plans to float. The fashion retailer was fluttering its eyelashes at those would-be investors once more yesterday as

Britain’s biggest retailer has returned to growth for the first time in a year. Tesco’s sales climbed by 0.3 per cent in the 12 weeks to February 1, according to new data from Kantar Worldpanel. It was the supermarket group’s first sales growth since last January and showed that it was “bouncing